Information Research Weblog

I was involved in an interesting event on Saturday afternoon, when I received an honorary degree (Filosofie Hedersdoktor) from Gothenburg University. The ceremony, covering a number of other 'hedersdoktorna' (including a roller-coaster designer and a Swedish poet, playwright and actor) and all new doctorates of the University, was held in the convention hall of the Svenska Mässen - the main exhibition hall in Gothenburg and lasted for three hours, with musical interludes of a variety of kinds from Scottish Gaelic 'mouth music' to a jazz trio and Thelonius Monk's 'Blue Monk'. At a rough guess there were close to 100 graduates and about 1,000 people in the audience.

In case you are wondering :-) - the cited reason for giving me an hon. doc. was that I have been visiting Sweden for the past 25 years, giving lectures on research, running workshops, etc., etc. and for the past few years I've been Visiting Professor at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science, which is a joint institution of the Gothenburg University and the Högskolan i Borås